Georgia Tech federal cybersecurity complaint & school response [Video]

ATLANTA — The Department of Justice announced on Thursday a complaint against the Georgia Institute of Technology, alleging the school had a culture of non-enforcement of cybersecurity regulations for “star researchers” who were obtaining large government contracts. 

Georgia Tech called the complaint “entirely off base,” and the school said it would “vigorously dispute it in court.”

The complaint, announced by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Atlanta, alleges that the school’s research arm that obtains federal contracts, the Georgia Tech Research Corporation, “failed to meet cybersecurity requirements” on such contracts with the Department of Defense across a period from May 2019 to as late as December 2021.

In a release, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said: “Georgia Tech, the suit alleges, routinely acquiesced to the demands of ‘star researchers’ — who were treated like ‘star quarterbacks’ because they secured large government contracts — when those researchers ‘pushed back’ on cybersecurity …